Due to the recent success of the Mens Basketball Team there
has been a high demand for tickets. Syracuse University is now home to one of
the largest on-campus population of scalpers. Before, during, and after every
home game the constant murmuring of “tickets, buying, selling, who wants what?”
can be heard throughout campus.
The
presence of scalpers has never been uncommon to the SU campus. Scalpers and SU
athletics have a long-standing relationship that can be traced back to the
1920s. As long as there has been athletics there have been scalpers a short
yell away.
Dr.
Michael Klutz, professor of tables and graphs, is studying the recent increase
of scalpers, the likes of which we have never seen before. Dr. Klutz, who has
been studying the relationship between scalpers and their environment for the
past 40 years, has noticed that not only is there an increase in scalpers but that
they are also expanding their territory. According to record books, scalpers
have only operated by the Gates of the Carrier Dome for the past 80 years. But
in the past 2 months we have seen their boundaries expand as far South as
Goldstein and as far North as Kimmel Dining Hall.
I
spoke with junior Mikey Thomas who said “I don’t think that it’s a problem when
we have scalpers on game days, but it seems like they are there every waking
second of every day, basketball season or not”.
Freshman
Rosie Perez was on her way to her 8 am class when she was bugged three
different times by three different scalpers about tickets. “I just don’t get it
– we don’t have another home game for like another week. They just stand out
there like statues but if you go anywhere near them all you can hear is “tickets,
tickets, tickets!'”
The
problem has become so bad that the scalpers already on campus have begun
selling tickets to outrageous events from first in line at Starbucks to B
League Intramural Basketball games.
It
seems the only safe escape is to camp inside the dome, a strategy many students
have already chosen to do. Everybody knows scalpers can’t get inside the dome;
we just have to pray that they don’t start impersonating students.
Anyway GO ORANGE!!!!
